TEXT:
HAMLET
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow:
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom,
Is thought-sick at the act.
GERTRUDE
Ay me, what act,
That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?
HAMLET
Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man:
This was your husband.
NOTES:
Hendiadys
Hendiadys (Greek for 'one through two') is a figure of speech whereby two ideas are combined to form a single image. A very simple example is a describing a cup of tea as "nice and hot". It features a great deal in the Bible, and indeed there are over sixty examples of it in Hamlet alone.
Branding
Branding was suggested as a punishment for harlotry by Henry VIII in 1513, but does not appear to have been put into practice. Branding was used throughout as a punishment (or rather an indicator) for people who had committed various crimes - often people were branded with a letter that explained what they had done. Slaves were also frequently branded. It is a particularly grim abuse of any human, marking their body for life either as criminals or as the supposed property of another person. For Hamlet even to intimate that his mother deserves to have her forehead branded is an especially violent image. Foreheads appear throughout this sequence as an indicator of a person’s character.
Hyperion
Hyperion was one of the Titans, eventually overthrown by the Olympian gods. He was the father of the Sun, the Moon and the Dawn (Helios, Selene and Eos, respectively.) He appeared earlier in the play in comparison with a satyr, and as Hamlet mentions him again, we are invited to remember the comparison, making Claudius out to be little more than a drunken, sex-obsessed half-goat.
Jove
Although he is better known as Jupiter, Jove is a frequently-used version of the name of the ruler of the Roman Gods, the Sky-Father. Jove comes from a Latin version of his name, and is a convenient version because it is only one syllable and can fit neatly into a poetic line. He was the king of the gods, and so if Hamlet is going to liken his father’s brow to any of them, it makes sense for it to be Jupiter.
Mars
Mars was the Roman version of the God of War. In Greek his name was Ares, but thanks to his having a planet named after him, Mars is the more famous version of the name.
Mercury
Mercury (Hermes in Greek) was the messenger of the gods. He had a pair of golden winged sandals that allowed him to fly faster than any bird, and also had a winged hat to match. One of the most popular gods in antiquity, Shakespeare captures him in motion here, elegantly ‘new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill’.
Brutus
As mentioned in the episode, Shakespeare echoes Antony’s eulogy for Brutus in Julius Caesar, which I quote below. I am always fascinated to see little echoes and links between plays - snapshots, perhaps, of how Shakespeare saw the world.
ANTONY
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world 'This was a man!'